1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an arrangement for and method of transferring materials between open-mouthed containers and, more particularly, to a portable arrangement for and method of loading materials to be coated and coating materials into a mixing pan of a tablet coating pan, and unloading the coated materials from the pan.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Tablet coating pans are well known for making coated candy such as jelly beans and for making coated pharmaceuticals such as time-delayed disintegration tablets. Such pans are used by initially putting in the materials to be coated and then by putting in the coating material. The mixing pan turns around at a rather slow speed for a rather long period of time, usually several hours. The coating material adheres to the materials to be coated. The final coating is a smooth, continuous, uniform layer adhered to the material coated.
A drawback associated with this type of coating pan is in the way the materials are loaded into it and in the way the coated materials are unloaded from it. As long as these pans have been used, the materials have been loaded into the pan by dumping it out of buckets. The coated materials have been taken out of the pan by scooping it out. This is a slow, costly and laborious procedure.
Another drawback associated with such pans is that a good deal of dust is raised during the loading and unloading steps. This is particularly disadvantageous in connection with pharmaceutical products because of cross-contamination between different products in the room where the coating is being effected. Sometimes, there can be fifty coating pans in a single room, each coating a different product. In the general field of loading materials, it is known to utilize non-portable and complex vacuum-generating arrangements to fill containers such as bottles or tank cars, with a liquid. Such cumbersome vacuum-generating arrangements are generally satisfactory for their intended use; however, they are too bulky and heavy to be used to load and/or unload pan after pan in a room installation wherein a plurality of coating pans are located.